My research focusses on medieval social history, extending one way to economic history and archaeology, the other way to cultural history and political action. I am interested in the way societies work and change as systems, and in how people deal with that change. My next projects are a general book on medieval Europe for Yale, and then a book on the eleventh-century Mediterranean.

Charles Webster is primarily engaged in work on Theophrastus von Hohenheim (known also as Paracelsus). Following on from his recent Yale UP book, which was mainly concerned with religious and social thinking of Paracelsus, he is at an advanced stage of a further book, mainly concerned with the scientific and medical work for which Paracelsus is particularly well known. His aim, as with the previous book, is to take full account of the recent literature and to adopt a fresh perspective.

I work on the history of mathematics. In particular, I am interested in the many different roles mathematics has played in culture in the past. My books include studies of the history of everyday mathematics and of the application of mathematics to music.

I am a senior adviser to Coutts & Co, and a member of the House of Lords.  I am Trustee of a number of charities and contributor to the national press, most recently to the New Statesman

My research interests span theory and policy, especially relating to competition and regulation. In particular, I am working with Mark Armstrong on the economics of competition for imperfect consumers. My main current policy-related interests arise from my work in 2010-11 as chair of the Independent Commission on Banking, which recommended fundamental reform to improve stability and competition in UK banking.

In the Spring 2015 I have completed (in collaboration with Silvia Donati and Jennifer Ashworth) the edition of the Questions on Aristotle’s Physics by the 13th-century English philosopher Geoffrey of Aspall (Latin text and English translation), which will be published in the British Academy Series Auctores Britannici. I am now editing (together with Aurélien Robert) a volume on space and time in the Middle Ages.